június 11.

Here at Blazing Griffin we’ve been watching the developments surrounding Valve’s refund policy announcement with interest (as have most indie devs). While there have been concerns raised about the policy, we believe the spirit in which it is intended is ultimately good for the games industry.

With this in mind, we’ve decided for The Ship: Murder Party that it is important that we re-iterate the state of the game and the wider franchise. We’ll keep this announcement up to date with new developments – the intention is that it contains the information you need to know before you decide whether to buy or not.

Technical Issues

As a studio we are always open to suggestions and welcome any constructive criticism from our players.

Unfortunately there are a few technical issues with the game and these can’t be fixed in its current incarnation. The reason they can’t be fixed is when we acquired the rights to the game in 2011 it didn’t include a technical licence to make changes using the Source Engine (which the game is written in).

We’re open to suggestions from players about our games and happy to implement good ideas or even make simple fixes – not being able to do it is an incredibly frustrating situation for us as well!

There are summaries of the issues and fixes for them on the forums, but the key ones you might want to know about are:

In-game server select doesn’t work. But this isn’t a problem because it’s still possible to connect to servers via the Steam client > View > Servers > The Ship. Here you can find and save servers as normal. You can still host LAN games and there are several other methods of adding servers manually posted on the forums.

Game doesn’t run. For a very few players, the game doesn’t work at all (although some players have found workarounds for this). Our hope is that Valve’s refund policy will now give you the option to try it out and see how things work on your machine.

Again, if we possibly could resolve any of these issues we would, but the cost of the licence to even begin doing so is more than it would cost to rebuild the game from scratch. Being a small studio, it's just not a viable option for us.

Players

You can see from Steam Charts how active the game is. There are usually a good number of active servers available and through busy periods such as the holidays and sales there are usually more people setting up new servers and posting the details on the forums.

There are a number of players working on new maps and have an interest in modding. This is something we’re keen to begin having a conversation about with players, and while we’re not making any promises about modding support, please drop by the discussion on the topic and let us know what you think.

If there's enough interest there, we can certainly look at helping out.

The Ship: Remasted

Yes, you read it right.

You might be wondering why you’ve not heard anything about this yet? The reason for that is that this is the announcement!

We’ve begun work on The Ship: Remasted (which as the name suggests will be a high definition version of The Ship: Murder Party multiplayer game) and it is expected to be released early 2016. Even better, we’ll now have complete control over the code base so the issues with the existing game won’t affect the new version and we’ll even be able to make the odd improvement or two.

We are fortunate to have been joined by two former employees of Outerlight (the developer of original HL2 mod, The Ship and Bloody Good Time) – Jason joined our team last year as Technical Director and Neil joined our team just this week as Lead Programmer. It’s fantastic to have their input on the project and we’re really excited about where we’re heading with it.

The reason we’re talking about this just now is that in the spirit of transparency, it might be information you need to make a decision about whether or not to buy The Ship: Murder Party - some people may want to wait until the new version comes out next year.

If you do – that’s fair enough. We hope you keep up to date with what we’re doing (check out our newsletter) and we’ll see you next year!

For everyone else, we hope you try out the original game – it’s a lot of fun! And what’s good for you, is definitely good for us! We’re a pretty small studio here and having just gone through a growth spurt to be able to take on The Ship: Remasted project, we are reliant on the revenue generated by The Ship: Murder Party to move forward with it.

All purchases contribute to funding the new project and we are very appreciative of this support from players – we're sure many of you have waited a long time for more ship-related things to happen! So as a thank you for those supporting us with purchases of the existing game (now and historically), there will be a discount for existing players when we launch The Ship: Remasted.

Over the next few months we'll be releasing more information about The Ship: Remasted project - stay tuned! In the meantime, if you have anything to say about any of this, please drop by the forums - we're happy to chat about it.

Értékelések

“its gameplay and design draw on everything from Poirot to Quake, with even a slightly unhealthy dose of The Sims thrown into the mix - but the game is much more than the sum of its well worn parts”
8 – Videogamer

“Unlike a lot of its hybrid predecessors, this multigenre multiplayer game really is something completely different. While the game draws on identifiable sources such as Quake, The Sims, and Clue, it mashes these elements together with a few new ideas to create an innovative experience that doesn't play like any of its inspirations.”
8.3 – Gamespot

“the game twists around the Clue formula to make it a little more interesting. Instead of having to uncover a killer, The Ship makes you the killer. The main gameplay mechanic revolves around finding your target, called your quarry, and breaking their face as stealthily as possible. To do so there are plenty of lethal odds-and-ends to wield, and even some environmental traps. It's certainly a quirky take on first-person gaming, but it's an entertaining one once you get the hang of it.”
7.4 – IGN

I literally stabbed George Bush in the face. Great game to play with friends, especially if they're playing as George Bush. Exceptional George Bush stabbing simulator. Would highly recommend to George Bush. I'm gonna say its a 9 out of 11. 9/11 George Bush.

This game, is what a game should really be: simple, effective and fun, now this game is not for everyone, especially for those who do not know what patience is. This game requires not a beefy computer, but a brain....

The Ship is a hunt and be hunted game, that means you will have a quarry to kill with other passengers in one of the many beautiful cruise ships that you can choose pre-game. You can choose a variety of weapons and come up with very creative ways to take out your prey. You can place a wallet bomb outside the room of your quarry and then BAM! there she goes. However you have keep a low profile and always watch your back, the map size depends on the cruise ship you chose, some are big maps with lots of doors and hallways while some are smaller.

You also need to rest, eat, go to the toilet and all those boring things, but dont get me wrong! Not only is this adding in a bit of realism, it also varies the game a bit my forcing you to find a toilet, have a snack or even read a book instead of going on a killing spree. You can also deposit all the money earned from killing into the bank to make sure your hard-earned cash stays safe after you die. Use this money to buy food or even clothes to look sexy and proffesional as possible when dealing out some hits!

For the maximum fun possible I recommend playing with friends you know (as in the case of most multiplayer games), but either way it can be fun if you want it to. There are alot of points I missed but those are for you to find out, go buy and play for yourself! But remember always watch your back, unless you want to feel helpless, hopeless and most of all...Dead!

The ship. A quite unique kind of stealth elimination game, get close to your enemies and then backstab then with a frying pan or a manequin arm.....It is hell of alot of fun, killin people here and there without getting cought by the Police, but if u do have money u can also add the strategy in this game , why?Well bribe the cop and kill everything u see xD .The game is kind of hard to master but after that it is a pleasure for both eyes and mind!Only con is : A small number of servers with enough people to play with.But i used game tracker and i found 2,3 servers which i had loads of fun on! xD

Like the time i was takeing a sh** and got killed by Bin Laden ..... Best part : I was Bush .